The processing needs in any system is limited partially by the rate at which instructions and controls may be performed. The functionality provided by a system is also limited by the resource requirements of the instruction or control and the total resources available for performance.
For example, the processing resources of any digital signal processor (DSP) is limited partially by the rate at which instructions may be performed. This rate is commonly referred to as the MIPS (million instructions per second) of the DSP chip. Typically, the functionality provided by a DSP is limited by either the MIPS or memory requirements of the algorithms that will execute on the core.